A book hop to revive this ‘performing art’

In the late 1940s and early 1950s (before he achieved fame), Jack Kerouac would frequent the jazz bars of Harlem, New York. These haunts were no-go areas for white folks, but the rhythms coming out of them held Kerouac spellbound.
Udayan Chakravarty takes up the scene. “A Jack Kerouac would walk into a bar, get way too drunk, and start reading out his work loudly.A Miles Davis, sitting with his trumpet in the corner, would start riffing along. His band would follow suit. And words would suddenly have notes to carry them.
“Over half-a-century later, we’re giving it another go.” Chakravarty, creative director at Wieden+Kennedy, has been suitably inspired to revive a ‘performing art’ that goes back to the dawn of the Beatnik age, when Kerouac — and Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs — were just starting to dig the jazz that men like Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk and Charlie Parker were creating, music that took its leave from big bands and swing.
Chakravarty is the brains and the spirit behind ‘The Book Hop’, an evening that seeks to bring back the free-form vibes of mid-century New York. And while the ‘Hop’ might not be able to wholly evoke the improvisatory feel of those days, things are bound to ‘go down’ when melodies wrap themselves around words.
“Pity there were no iPhones, handheld video cameras or documentary film-makers to capture any of it,” continues adman Chakravarty, of that glorious age. “The words soaked up all the music they could. And the rest, just faded with time.”
So at ‘The Book Hop’, you’ll have William Dalrymple reciting from his traveller’s notes from war-ravaged Beirut (Lebanon), as the ‘Jazz B*stards’ find an appropriately apocalyptic score. And how about some Urdu poetry to accompany the jazz? Well, there’s that too. Fouzia, the country’s first female dastango, will be reading verses from the work of Parveen Shakir and Ali Sardar Jafri, giants both in the world of ‘shairi’.
Also featuring on the night will be Sabika Abbas Naqvi, Sayantan Ghosh, Andrew Hoffland, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, Divya Dureja — and Karam Vir Lamba, who, incidentally, will be reading from the preface of Douglas Adams’ ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’. And as the words flow, the ‘B*stards’ (whose version of jazz is, we’re told, informed by psych-rock) will turn their jazz ‘up’ or ‘down’ tempo (or creepy?), as befits the mood.
Stefan Kaye, founder member of the Jazz B*stards, anticipates a challenge. “We’re presented with 12 pieces of text, which stylistically vary wildly. Some of it will be on the fly, some of it we’ll prepare beforehand,” says Kaye, emphasising that the words have to breathe as much as the music.
“As far as I’m concerned, the focus is on the words — we want the words to come out. It’s the readers who’re in the spotlight, not the band.”
‘The Book Hop’ takes place on March 22, at the OddBird Theatre in Chhattarpur. Hopefully, Chakravarty and Co are just getting started.